Champion of the Rose - Kobo Ebook (18 page)

If he succeeded in destroying the Rose, Strake might choose
to take the child and send Soren some place where she could not serve as a
reminder of his ordeal. An easier route
than struggling with fury every time he saw her.

Soren found that her hands had closed into fists, and forced
them to relax. He had not proved a
pointlessly cruel man, at least so far. But a flicker of unease still ran through her, something she recognised
as being outside herself. The Rose. She hadn't felt it this way since they'd left
the Tongue.

Worriedly, she looked down the stair and discovered the room
dark,
magelight
gone. But before she could leap to her feet, her eyes adjusted to the gloom
enough for her to make out Strake, watching her from the shadows.

"Can you unmake it?" she asked, when he didn't
move.

With the Rose a subdued roil at the back of her head, his
dim, shaded figure became a threatening unknown. Why did he just stand there? But then he stepped forward into the sunlight,
and though the Rose's unease didn't go away, Soren was reassured by the way he
spared a moment to gaze up the shaft of the bell-tower at the dance of light
and dust. Her imagination had served her
images of a mind-blasted zombie, of her Rathen suddenly run mad or again
possessed by the Rose. Whatever he had
learned, he was still Strake.

"It's possible."

Without pause for explanation he walked up the stair,
swiping at the grit on his boots before re-entering the Treasury. Soren followed, thinking she'd never seen her
Rathen so subdued.

The palace came back, and she slowed, distracted by a
stand-up fight between two guardswomen in the garrison. Lord Aristide alone in the East Garden, the
Seneschal staring at herself in a mirror, Aspen lost as usual in a whirl of
gossip. Strake watching her with a
shuttered frown as she walked into the Treasury. He ran his hand along the side of the
entrance and the wall obligingly returned.

"Possible at what price?" Soren asked, and he
looked at her sharply. Not out of anger
or fear, but something less easily read.

"It's an atrociously complicated spell," he
said. "Different from what I
expected. The Rose itself is a construct
rather than an entity. A set of
instructions." He began lifting
dust-cloths from odd, obviously arcane objects and testing the locks on the
chests, opening what he could. Prowling
about, as if he didn't want to explain.

"Are you saying it's not sentient?" Remembering the struggle of wills at the back
of her mind, Soren doubted this very much.

Picking a string of tarnished bells out of one of the
caskets, Strake poked at the wadding which prevented them from chiming before
setting them on the bench beside a dome of silver and crystal.

"It's not any one thing," he said. "The plant provides a living shell, but
it has no 'being'. I understand now why
it created Champions even when there were no
Rathens
. In a way it can't not create Champions – half
its functions seem to rely on interaction with one. Certainly the divinations covering the palace
require a mind the Rose doesn't own. So
it needs Champions just as much as it needs
Rathens
. And
Rathens
... Did you see the colour of the
runes?" He waited until she
nodded. "
Domina
Rathen's
blood, mixed with I don't know what. She must have bled herself half-dry to finish
that room. It not only provides a means
of identifying her descendants, it's where the Rose gets its power. It draws it from
Rathens
."

"Not just the King?"

"Just the King at the moment." Bitterness flashed in his eyes and he
continued turning out the chest of bells without really looking at them. "It can store power, so it was still
able to create Champions these past two centuries, but even with my return –
perhaps thanks to my return, given that Walk – it would be the weakest it has
been since it was first created."

"Making it easier to destroy?"

"Very much so." He glanced at her again. "I'd have to look into it further, but pulling it down might be as
simple as destroying that room – and dealing with the power left unbound by the
structure of the runes."

The Rose was no longer jittering at the back of her mind,
but Soren was less than reassured. Strake was not behaving like a man who had discovered his enemy was
weak. She wanted him to declare that the
Rose would be gone within the day, wanted to have her head her own and her
Rathen provided the vengeance he needed to stop hating her. And she saw no sign in his face that she
would be given these things.

"Do you think it will try and stop you?" she
asked, and her voice came out small.

"It might not recognise the threat." He made an impatient gesture at her
incomprehension. "It's not a
person. It's a list of orders. Defend
Rathens
, the
palace, the borders themselves in a way. Divine the proper heir, a suitable Champion. It would stop anyone but King and Champion
from entering that room, but preventing the Rathen Ruler from dispelling it
isn't its function."

"But I could feel it. Fighting against itself."

"Two rules conflicting. And the stronger – protect the bloodline – won out against the
weaker."

"Protect the King."

That goaded look was back. It gave Soren barely a moment's warning before he suddenly swept bells,
casket, packing, and the rest of the contents of the bench to the floor. Crystal shattered, muffled bells clunked, and
a black sphere rolled slowly away. Outside, Strake's guard glanced toward the door, plainly uncertain what
if anything they'd heard.

Soren had taken a step back, her stomach a roil of anger
without focus. Sun send her a
better-tempered Rathen, or at least some way of dealing with this one without
being constantly pitched into storms. Or
some way to touch him he would accept.

He was standing frozen now, face blank, watching the sphere
as it disappeared under a bench. Outside, the younger of the pair of guards pressed her ear to the
door. Soren watched Strake's hands,
already closed into fists, contract even tighter.

Then he bowed his head. With an exasperated grimace, he righted the fallen casket and knelt on
the near side of the crystal shards, picking up the largest fragment.

When Soren bent to help, he spared her a fraction of a
glance, and said: "Leave it." The tone was curt and he looked down before continuing. "An exercise of my mother's. I clean up whatever mess my temper causes."

But you're King now, Soren thought, staring at the
blue-black crown of his head. His
expression was intent as he worked, attention given entirely to bells and
slivers of crystal. If possible, she
felt more shut out from his thoughts than ever before. What was going on?

Holding her tongue, she stood discreetly back as he filled
the casket, then swept up the smaller shards with one of the dust cloths. Outside, the two guardswomen had stopped
trying to listen at the door, and were now talking earnestly. It did not seem they would risk bursting in.

"Where is Aristide
Couerveur
?"
Strake asked then, fetching the black sphere from beneath another bench.

"In the East Garden." Soren spared a moment to watch
Jansette
curtseying before a seated Lord Aristide. Pale and golden, their hair shone in the late
morning sun. Lord Aristide was looking
particularly amused.

Depositing the sphere in the top of the casket, Strake
unbarred and opened the door, walking between two guards who had leapt
frantically into position a moment earlier. He strode off purposefully, with the air of a man going to perform an
unpleasant task. There was little Soren
could do but close the Treasury door and follow, pretending not to notice the
looks exchanged by the guards falling in behind her. He was heading directly toward the East
Garden.

Was he actually going to discuss the Rose with Lord
Aristide? Talk about what it had done to
them? Soren sorted her options, for her
one resolve since she'd learned she was pregnant had been that her child would
never know how it was conceived. She
would rather be thought ambitious, or a tool in some pragmatic plan on Strake's
part to ensure the Rathen succession. To
have anyone else know the details of that last night in the Tongue was doubly
distressing, for it would only increase the chance of the truth making its way
to her child.

He had said that he could unmake the Rose, that it was
possible, but quite obviously there had been some snag in the detail. Some unanticipated complication more
difficult to accept than the loss of the Rose's protections. What had he discovered?

Chapter Fourteen

The quadrangle known as the East Garden was a lonely
place. With the palace's water drawn by
enchantments, the well in the centre was a neglected decoration, and the
until-recently sealed doors to the southern buildings had long meant there was
no through-traffic. The carpet of grass
was bisected by a path and circle of stone around the well, lined with white
standard roses. Sparsely-stocked beds ran
along all four walls, subdued in Autumn but still sprinkled with spots of red
and yellow. One wall was cut by tall
spears of cypress, drawing the eye toward roof and sky, and there were rows of
windows in every direction, behind which a small audience was already pausing
to watch the King come to visit. But
still there was a sense of isolation. Emptiness.

Shortly before midday, the sun was directly overhead, but
the day was not warm and occasional clouds even dared to dim the garden's sole
occupants. Lord Aristide was seated on
the furthest of a cluster of garden benches nestled in the south-east corner,
and
Jansette
stood before him, wearing a prettily
earnest expression as she spoke. When
Strake strode in, Lord Aristide turned his head a fraction, but
Jansette
did not seem to notice until the Regent's son rose
and swept into a bow. Turning, she made
an appealing picture of confusion, suddenly confronted by the King.

As ever,
Jansette
inspired in
Soren a mix of desire and dismay. Such
beauty wasted on such an idiot. It was
different to see her in person rather than palace-sight, to experience the full
effect of her perfume and that peach-milk skin. Soren was not the least bit surprised when Strake stopped to survey her
as he would a sunset or swallows.

Today she contrived to look astonishingly young in white and
pale yellow, with high neck and long sleeves. She curtsied less gracefully than usual, peeking up at Strake's closed
expression, and then past him to Soren as if appealing for help. Exquisite, delectable.

It was Lord Aristide who stepped forward, while Soren tried
to dislodge the memory of
Jansette
and the Regent's
last night together, along with a few past fancies of her own. She refused the inevitable image of
Jansette
and Strake.

"Your Majesty," Lord Aristide said, "may I
present Lady
Jansette
Denmore
? One of the lights of the Court." He looked truly appreciative, as if
introducing
Jansette
to his King was something he
only wished he'd thought of sooner. They
were themselves a pair, Soren realised – both displaced from power by Strake's
return, both seeking new roles. Perhaps
even the same one?

Strake, however, was not in the mood for flirtation, no
matter how beautiful the woman. "
Denmore
?" he repeated. "A relation of Baron Lucas?" He was already looking impatient.

"Only distantly, Your Majesty,"
Jansette
replied, and proffered up a charming, tentative
smile. "I should, I mean I wish to,
would like to say welcome home. Your
Majesty." She sank immediately into
another curtsey, this time with weightless ease, then hurriedly extracted
herself from the encounter, whisking past the guards now stationed at the
garden's entrance.

Soren watched
Jansette's
face as
she paused to glance back, then moved so she could watch the encounter through
one of the many windows. Pleased with
herself. But Lord Aristide had already
switched to a more formal stance, and Strake was gesturing for him to sit back
down, so Soren could not spare the attention to try and analyse a past
favourite's false fit of nerves.

"What can I do for you, Your Majesty?" Lord
Aristide asked, as Strake planted himself in the middle of the bench
opposite. Soren, who had no mind to be
eternally standing in a corner during Strake's conversations, chose a third
bench and smoothed her surcoat over her knees. This all felt too calm, after her expectation of epic
confrontation. The morning had been set
aside for vanquishing the Rose, not sitting in a garden opening manoeuvres with
Aristide
Couerveur
. It conjured an entirely different sense of peril. Why wouldn't Strake tell her what he'd
discovered? Why was he suddenly here,
apparently planning to take the most difficult hurdle of his short reign?

For an overlong moment both men indulged in intent, critical
survey, to which Lord Aristide added splendid insouciance. His ease suggested a gathering of friends
indulging in some particular pleasure. Since Strake's return he'd had time to consider his situation, speak to
his allies, judge whether it would be possible to take the throne. Strake had not so much as offered him a
conversation, which many had read as Lord Aristide not being in the new King's
favour. Now, turn-about – the King had
come to the Diamond
Couerveur
. Darest's future would ride on this encounter.

"I suppose," Strake said finally, "the
question is not should I appoint you Councillor of Mages, but whether you would
accept the position."

Fascinating to watch the subtleties of reaction. Lord Aristide's ever-glittering smile turned
almost wry, star sapphire eyes searched blue-black, and he sat slightly
back. It was re-evaluation.